Attendance: Dorothy Blow, Jeremy Donald, Amory Irby, Michael Kaminski, Tina Petimezas, Wilson Plunkett, Christina Ramos, Sylvia Reyna, Ruth Swan, Ruby Wehmeyer, and Kathy Amen.

We had some GPO-related business to take care of. Kathy presented a letter (an edited version of one posted on govdoc-l by Arlene Weible of UNT) for the group to send to our Senators urging full GPO funding. The letter stresses access and preservation issues in outlining the need for continued paper distribution of important documents. Michael will sign the letter as our President and send copies to Senators Cornyn and Hutchinson. If you want to see the letter, click here to access it as a Word document.

Kathy asked if all had sent their Essential TItles survey responses in and most of us did. Even though we're not sure how much good it will ultimately do in insuring continued paper distribution of important titles.

Several libraries reported a great many duplicate microfiche in the latest shipments.

News from various libraries:

• SAPL has a lot fewer requests for paper tax forms this tax season, probably due to increased use of internet-available forms, not to mention electronic and telephone filing increases. Michael is undertaking a major weeding project, going over the collection piece-by-piece. And the Chihuly glass sculpture will be cleaned next year, although no one is sure exactly how this will be accomplished. We'll have to schedule a meeting at SAPL during the process so we can see how they do it.
• SAC has been using III's link checker and has found it to be useful in finding broken links in the catalog. They also are still subscribing to the Index to Government Periodicals, apparently the last folks in town to have this unique resource.
• Ruth was the only Palo Alto representative who was able to attend today's meeting due to meetings out there. She mentioned that their library is trying a donation-based coffee shop in the building.
• At Trinity, Jeremy has been using blogs with professors and student users, to notify them of resources of interest. He has also been using Captivate, a Macromedia product which does screen capturing for building tutorials on online resources. He's been using it with Lexis. We were intrigued enough about this new high-tech stuff that we asked Jeremy to host the next meeting so he could demonstrate the programs for us. He also mentioned a new government search function offered by the search engine Clusty.com. Right now click on their link to their new "government tab."

Another item from Trinity: entry after 8 p.m. on weekday evenings is by Trinity card only, as the doors are locked then. Special arrangements can be made for non-Trinity folks needing to use docs. The ensuing discussion of entrance policies and schedules prompted Kathy to ask everyone to review their hours as listed in the directory. Please let her know if your information is out-of-date and needs to be changed.

Our next meeting will be held on May 6 at Trinity at 9:30 a.m.

Respectfully submitted,

Kathy Amen, Secretary/Treasurer

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